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When I Was Summer

Nora Wakelin has always felt like an outsider in her own family. Her parents and older sister love her, but they don’t understand anything about her: not her passion for music, not her all-encompassing crush on her very unavailable bandmate Daniel, not her recklessness and impulsiveness. Nora has always imagined that her biological mother might somehow provide the answer to why she feels like such an outsider.

Through internet stalking and leaps of logic, Nora identifies three women living elsewhere in California who seem like they could be the person she’s been searching for. She sets out to track them down, one by one, under the pretense of a statewide tour with her band. Three cities, three gigs, three possible birth mothers–it sounds so easy.

But once they’re on the road, it’s anything but easy. Nora wants to be with Daniel, she wants to find her birth mother, she wants to keep her parents happy, she wants the band to stay together, and she wants to know why she is the way she is. But she won’t be the first musician to find out that, while you can’t always get what you want, sometimes you get what you need.